For over 100 years Pine Mountain has been focused on enriching lives and connecting people through Appalachian place-based education for all ages.
INDEX TO ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS
An in-depth digital look at the ARCHIVE at Pine Mountain Settlement School. The collections include photographs, documents, biographies, objects, video and other materials that describe the institution from its beginnings in 1913 to the present day. Many documents are available in FULL TEXT.
Work is ongoing.
ABOUT THE ARCHIVE
OUR VISION
The Vision of the Pine Mountain Settlement School Archives is to provide a voice that will encourage transformations in our relationship to the cultures of the Appalachian region through access to a unique and extensive body of material about a rural settlement school within the region. The rural settlement school movement and its impact on the people of Eastern Kentucky and the Southern Appalachians is a story that has sometimes been misrepresented, romanticized, or only partially understood. We envision an accessible, deep, vibrant and vital resource that will encourage exploration and collaborative dialogue about the hidden and sometimes contested history of rural settlement schools. We envision a broader dissemination of research materials across all public, private, and federal sectors interested in Southern Appalachian cultures and life. more …
OUR ARCHIVAL MISSION
The Pine Mountain Settlement School archival mission supports the institutional mission and strategic planning goals. Our institutional mission continues a long 105-year history of multiple educational and social enrichment programs centered on the local community and beyond. Once a boarding school with a progressive educational curriculum, Pine Mountain School’s recent educational programming has moved away from residential education to multi-faceted offerings of short-term environmental, cultural, medical, social, agricultural, and art and craft programs and workshops. But, the archive has not moved away from, nor will it move away from, a commitment to Pine Mountain as place and people. more …
To visit the main page for the School click the link below. To access the Archive go to INDEX TO ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS (also at the top of the page).
PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL MAIN PAGE
https://www.pinemtn.org/
WHAT’S NEW! 2018
OCTOBER 2018
EVERETT K. WILSON A Pine Mountain Study in Civics 1937
Print Shop, c. 1942: Student at printing press (1). Harmon Fdn. movie still.
[pm_harm_094.j
John Dewey noted: “To keep the eyes on the book and the ears open to the teacher’s words is a mysterious source of intellectual grace.” Everett Wilson, author and teacher, knew how to spread grace all around in this small instructional book.
Ritchie family crafts. [dolls_baskets_005.jpg]
Kitty was born the sixth of 14 children and was one of six Ritchie siblings who attended Pine Mountain School throughout the 1920s. After graduating from Pine Mountain School, Kitty went on to study at Berea (Kentucky) College.
Several of the Ritchies were adept at spinning, weaving, quilting, and basket making. Kitty and her sister Mallie learned from their older sister, May Belle Ritchie (Deschamps) a very special craft that she first saw at Hindman Settlement School. It consisted of the construction of dolls, usually in pioneer costume averaging 10 inches in height, from corn shucks, the dried leaves or “husks” of corn cobs. The Ritchies’ talents have long been widely admired and are kept alive by the succeeding generations of the Ritchie family to this day.
Read more about Kitty Ritchie and the Ritchie family at:
KITTY RITCHIE Biography
MAY RITCHIE Biography
DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH Stones, More Stones, and Scalloped Potatoes
“Helen Wilmer Stone.” on a stone-strewn path. 047_IV_FN_03a_024
Pine Mountain’s dance with stones started very early as this excerpt from a 1914 letter describes
“Another piece of economy has been the application of the two-birds-with-one-stone theory to the loose stones on our cultivable ground. We have secured building material for two sanitary closets and a fine tool house by gathering wagon loads of obstructive stone from our potato fields. As to rocks, we still have more worlds to conquer and we shall use them for building and retaining walls, paving, and roads.” Nov. 14, 1914, Letter to Friends from Ethel de Long
Stone soup, drystack walls, scalloped potatoes, limestone kilns, and more stone stories are included in this blog about Pine Mountain’s stone gifts and obstacles.
SEPTEMBER 2018
PACK HORSE LIBRARIANS
Want to learn more about some of the early Pack Horse Librarians at Pine Mountain Settlement that were recently featured in the new Kitchen Sister’s Podcast series, THE KEEPERS Podcast #2 “The Pack Horse Librarians of Eastern Kentucky”?
PACK HORSE LIBRARY SERVICE at PMSS
COMMUNITY GROUP ASSEMBLY May 20, 1942
RUTH SHULER DIETER Appreciation Album I & II
MOUNTAIN CRAFTSMAN JESS PATTERSON
One of our latest additions to the PMSS Collections website is the biography of Jess Patterson, a Pine Mountain Settlement School student and worker, who became a notable dulcimer-maker and who was featured in Craig Evan Royce’s book, Country Miles Are Longer Than City Miles (1976).
On a pivotal day in the 1930s, Pine Mountain Settlement School’s woodworking teacher, Boone Callahan, suggested to Jess Patterson, the School’s bus driver, “Jess, why don’t you go up in the wood shop and make something?” That question and Jess’s response were the first steps toward Jess’s future career as a well-known and respected craftsman.
Dulcimer, front view, crafted by Jess Patterson in 1969. Image courtesy of Geoff Reeve-Black, RevelsMusic. co.uk, 2018. [pmss_dulcimer_ patterson_-8.jpg]
Jess’s finest creations were his beautiful dulcimers. They continue to be highly regarded to this day, not only because of the traditional techniques that he used to maximize tonal quality but also for their unique designs.
In his youth, Jess had been a student at the School along with his future wife, Edna Mae (Metcalf) Patterson (1910-2001). Edna also became a worker at the School, excelling in the art of weaving.
Click on their names to read more about the lives of these two Pine Mountain artisans and their contributions to the history of Kentucky crafts.
GUIDE TO FAMILIES IN PINE MOUNTAIN VALLEY COMMUNITY
SEE WHAT’S NEW! ARCHIVE for older featured collections
Visit our partnering institution H-Net Commons and H-Kentucky.
For instructions on subscribing to H-Kentucky go to:
http://networks.h-net.org/node/905/pages/965/subscribing-network
COMMENTS & CONTACT
Comments and feedback regarding the material on this website or on the institutional history are welcomed. Comments directly on the website are not enabled.
Please contact office@pinemountainsettlementschool.com or (606) 558-3571 with your inquiries and comments. We welcome your identification of people and activities on our site and, particularly, corrections to the record.
PMSS ARCHIVE MISSION STATEMENT (extended)
ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION
ORAL HISTORY RELEASE AGREEMENT
ORAL HISTORY ASSOCIATION – PRINCIPLES AND BEST PRACTICES
USE AGREEMENT (Reproduction Request Form)
ABOUT OCR TEXT
Many of the texts included in this site have been automatically generated using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. In some cases, these texts have not been manually reviewed or corrected.
OCR enables searching of large quantities of full-text data, but it is not 100% accurate. The level of accuracy depends on the print quality of the original publication and its condition at the time of microfilming. Publications with poor quality paper, small print, mixed fonts, multiple column layouts or damaged pages may have poor OCR accuracy.
CITATION OF MATERIALS
Any PUBLIC use of material must properly cite Pine Mountain Settlement School in the following manner:
“[Identification of Item],” [Collection Name] [Series Number, if applicable]. [date], Pine Mountain Settlement School, Pine Mountain, KY. [date accessed]
STATEMENT REGARDING PRIVACY
The manuscript collections and archival records in the Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections may contain sensitive and/or confidential information derived from historical archives that may be protected under federal and state right to privacy laws and regulations. Researchers who wish to publish and users who may share material from the Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections are advised by this notice that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in some collections within the Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g. may be a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy if facts concerning an individual’s private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person for which Pine Mountain Settlement School assumes no responsibility.
If you believe that your privacy rights have been invaded please notify the following.
office@
See INDEX TO COLLECTIONS for an overview of collections and series.